Don't even think of giving up!

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Month: March 2018

Bad memories I’ve tucked away for years seeped to the surface recently, and it comes from reading posts from others sharing their painful experiences as a child or as a teenager. I have very few good memories of high school—it was a bastion of bullies—a boot camp that separated the men from the boys, the women from the girls. I suffered alone, often going home and pounding a pillow like it was the bully of the day, then breaking down in tears, sobbing silently; the pain was so bad.

Despite those difficult circumstances, I believed it was possible to have your own personal pep rally; to encourage yourself that things will get better, situations will improve, you can go on, or in some cases, move on. I’d tell myself things would get better when I got out of high school. Grownups don’t act like that.

No. They sometimes act worse and in more deceptive ways, not caring what lies they tell or whose life they destroy to get what they want. Although those bullies are classified as adults, they’re often more vicious than any pubescent or teenage antagonist ever thought about being. One major difference is that young people who are victims of bad behavior usually don’t have enough life experiences to understand one important fact.

Something I didn’t learn until I was well into my adult years.

Here it is. No matter how high or mighty we rise, no matter how rich or powerful we become, whether we’re beautiful or handsome, or ugly as a Blob fish, and no matter who protects us, we do not get away with mistreating others.

Eventually, a day of reckoning will come, the Karma bus will arrive, we will reap what we’ve sown, and we’ll sometimes get it back much worse than what we gave our victims.

Since Dan died, I’ve had to reconvince myself of this more than once. He was the one who kept me grounded, who reminded me to let things go. In the last several years, I’ve found that a few people not only stuck a sword in my back, they twisted it and forced it in deeper, and in some cases took advantage of the fact that I’m a widow.

I’ve wanted so many times to go home or call Dan to tell him what happened, so he could tell me everything was going to be all right; they would get theirs someday. That’s not an option anymore, for the house is empty and of course, there’s no way I can call him.

People who belittle or bulldoze others in their way may think they’ll get by with what they do or what they’ve done to others, but in time it’ll catch up with them. In my cases I may not see it happen, but I can rest assured and you can too in your situation, that no matter how badly someone has treated you or where you are in life when it happens, what goes around, comes around. It may take a long time—I’ve seen it take over thirty years, but it will happen.

I still see some of my tormenters from those horrible high school days around about and occasionally their profile picture will pop up on Facebook. As I write this I’m looking at one of them who made it her business to let me, and anyone else around, know which of my physical characteristics were mock worthy.

I know some of her history since we left high school, and it hasn’t been good. It’s been painful, in fact, and I do feel sympathy for her. But I can’t help but wonder does she remember how she made me feel so inferior, making fun of me for what I had no control over.

And I sincerely hope no one has told her Father Time has not been her boyfriend.